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Here’s to the many moments gone by already and the many more to come in the new year.
Your Thoughts?
Moments
December 31, 2011 at 10:00 pm 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Personal 2 Responses to “Moments”
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Very Cool, Dan!
Happy New Year To You, Amigo!
Thanks much for your blog, it’s a great place to think, learn, and, ocassionally, to scuffle.
P3ACE
STEVE
Beautiful, brilliant. A long reply below, a piece I recently had published.
I’ve Heard Bocelli
Thanksgiving has come and gone, but everyday brings reminders of things to be thankful for. Last night I watched National Public Broadcasting and it reminded me of the following things I’m grateful for:
I’ve heard Andrea Bocelli sing “Amapola,” Frank Sinatra sing “September of My Years,” Barbara Streisand sing “Memories,” Nat “King” Cole sing “Stardust,” and oh so many more. I’ve heard Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring,” Greig’s piano concerto, Ravel’s “Bolero,” Gershwin’s “American in Paris,” and oh so many more.
I’ve read J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen Donaldson, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and oh so many more who have taken me to other worlds. I’ve read Joseph Ellis, David McCullough, Barbara Tuckman, Frederick Douglas, Madelyn Joslyn Gage, and other historians and memoirists who have made history live for me. I’ve read Bart Ehrman, Susan Jacoby, John Crosson, Naomi Wolf, C.S. Lewis, and other scholars who lit up my thinking cap.
I’ve eaten good old burgers and dogs, tender steaks and succulent lobster, shrimp and scallops, Macintosh apples and freestone peaches, wild strawberries and hand-picked blueberries, and oh so many other delicious foods. I’ve nipped Tulamore Dew, Bailey’s Irish Cream, a wee drop of Jack Daniel’s, and savored a cold Heineken, a Guinness, a Yeungling and oh so many others.
I’ve wet my body in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, went balloon riding and gliding and white water rafting and skiing and fishing and hunting. I’ve sat in my comfortable home and explored the depths of the ocean, the savannahs of Africa, the last tigers of India, the birth of a wildebeast, the death of a wildebeast, the cycle and beat of life, all through the technology of television I watched grow so much just in my lifetime.
I’ve laughed at Carol Burnett, Johnny Carson, Jeff Dunham, George Carlson, Bob Hope and Red Skelton, the Shakespeare Company, and oh so many more. I’ve heard them over the radio and watched them on television. What’s next?
I gone from a slide rule, to a hand crank calculator, to a Texas Instruments pocket calculator, to a computer with more power than the one used to get the first man to the moon, which I also watched on a grainy black and white television. I’ve learned to get out of the way of people with phones stuck in their ears no matter what they are doing or who they are talking to, and laughed at couples sitting in a booth without looking or talking to each other as they played on their handhelds.
I’ve watched the sun rise over Chittenango creek, I’ve watched the sun set over Cranberry Lake, and through the magic of Ferd Grofe’s “Grand Canon Suite” I’ve heard the sunrise over the Canyon. I’ve seen the moonrise over Chittenango Creek and the Moon shed rays across Cranberry Lake. I’ve seen the moon so big it appeared I could reach out and touch it.
I’ve had a fascinating, though usually not discernible, dream life. I’ve had dog companions extraordinaire.
I’ve sat in the stands as Syracuse University win a national title in football, in the Dome as they went on to win the NCAA tourney in basketball, I’ve witnessed several lacrosse national championships and learned to be satisfied yet thinking one more would be soooo…. nice.
I’ve experienced the healing wonder of modern medicine, spoken before many audiences, loved and been loved, written many things, especially good friends. I could go on and on, and I haven’t even said anything about my wife and family whose love and confidences I keep close. I stop hear here because I’ve probably bored you already.
Big deal, you say, most of those things are just “everyday.” Ah, yes, but that’s where we mostly live, in the everyday, and I believe that is where we must find the greatest number of things we are thankful for. That great bell-shaped curve says that most of us are or very near average; we’re probably better than we think we are and we’re probably worse than we think we are—everyday. And if hearing the joyful song of a bird, or if wondering at the amazing growth of technology, or listening to great music and wondering about the amazing abilities of composers, lyricists, and performers isn’t something to be thankful for, everyday, or all the other things I’ve listed and skipped, what is?